Is there a relationship between facial hair and male pattern baldness?

[Avocado]

I have been thinking about it. My father and one of my brothers have the same male pattern baldness pattern and they can grow great beards. I can't grow a beard if my life depended on it; and my male pattern baldness is different than theirs.

Do you think there is a correlation between the two?

 

[shookwun]

No their isn't. Its been proven that bald men don't have higher T and DHT then their non-balding counter parts. But I did read a study showing that bald men actually have lower T on average. It all falls down to androgen sensitivity and receptor at the scalp.


Growing a beard is just genetics

 

[Vlatch]

Well, DHT increases body hair growth and decreases scalp hair growth in balding men.

But shookwun is also right, you can still have a great beard and great hair or no beard and no hair, it all depends on androgen sensitivity.

 

[Dazzel]

No, I can barely grow facial hair and at 19 i'm going bald, Started when I turn't 16 and back then I had no facial hair. Also I have seen men with thick hair, no signs of male pattern baldness and yet had a beard.

 

[smyth01]

A poor guy at my gym (age 21) had no even a single hair on his face, no body hair apart from a pathetic pubic bush. Yet he had terrible male pattern baldness for his age. He lacked any sign of muscle even with an aggressive workout routine and diet.

 

[Pioneer]

I personally have almost no hair on my arms or chest and grow very little facial hair.

 

[abcdefg]

I think there is certainly a correlation most of the time. Why do men with little facial hair presumably with pretty low androgen levels still go bald? Its always been the layout and amount of receptors distributed throughout your scalp hairs which are probably genetically determined that ultimately controls your male pattern baldness. Sensitivity to the androgens has always been the largest piece of the male pattern baldness puzzle, and its pretty poorly understood still so everyone just guesses.
Most of the time men going bald have higher androgen levels and are hairy in general. Not always its the sensitivity that determines what happens since every man has androgens.

 

[recedingyt]

I was a NW5 prior to starting to treat my hair loss and I have hardly any facial/body hair. I doubt there's any relation.. probably just comes down to genetics/how sensitive your follicles are to androgens.

 

[abcdefg]

A poor guy at my gym (age 21) had no even a single hair on his face, no body hair apart from a pathetic pubic bush. Yet he had terrible male pattern baldness for his age. He lacked any sign of muscle even with an aggressive workout routine and diet.

That is very uncommon. The guy must have crazy high androgen receptor expression in his hair follicles. A big chunk of the explanation is just unknown still. Is it PGD2? Is it the WNT pathway signalling not working right? I mean there is more under the hood certainly but no one has pieced it together it.

 

[Mccoybob17]

I wish, I can't grow a beard if my life depended on it. Even less body hair. Still losing the hair that matters, unfortunately!

 

[Rudolphus]

In my opinion, there is a weak correlation, but not a strong one. The more important factor in male pattern baldness is androgen sensitivity. I believe that androgen sensitivity varies extremely widely between different men, whereas androgen levels vary significantly less (unless you're using hormone-altering drugs). Therefore, I believe that androgen sensitivity variance is the biggest factor in terms of why some men go bald and some don't.

 

[abcdefg]

Yeah sensitivity has always been the most important piece, but no one knows anything about it. Cue the snake oils and random theory crafting. Then once someone figures a piece of it out than snake oil starts to incorporate that into selling their new snake oil that capitalizes on the still unknown pieces. Like today even most snake oil mentions DHT in there because its basically scientific fact its heavily involved in causing male pattern baldness.